Making A Business Prosper By Outsourcing Work

As your business grows, the point will come when you undoubtedly find the need to task others with some portion of your operations. As you expand, you are not going to be able to do everything. In fact, I bet there is something you can identify that is taking up more time than you have. Hiring someone else to take care of certain tasks only makes sense.

One of the first things that you will need to get clear is the definition of outsourcing. Most people do not actually go into outsourcing work, they out-task work. The difference is this:

Out-Tasking is when you hire someone to do a one-off job such as:

Business card design

Website development

Legal contracts

Copywriting

Software development

Outsourcing is when you hire someone to work on tasks that are business function focused and long term. It is all about things that happen repeatedly that are vital to the functioning of your business. Some examples are:

On-going projects

Virtual (Personal) assistant

Customer Service Team

On-going SEO

Accounting

Pay-per-click management

You can see the important difference here. Obviously, you do not need to hire a full time graphic artist to design business cards. The same holds true for many things that you need to accomplish for your business. Hiring a freelancer via out-tasking is the perfect solution. The advantage of out-tasking is that you do not have to hire someone that sits around waiting for work that you do not have. You only hire someone as needed.

Outsourcing work is very business focused. It is about building a long-term sustainable business and the systems that go with it. Once you create a workflow and hire people to fulfill that, you have outsourced. The initial problem that you may face is that you have to train people to do tasks that you can already do more efficiently. It may even take you longer to show them than to just do the task, but you have to think long term. Once trained this is their task now, which will improve time management and work quality.

Something important to remember is being cautious about upfront payments. Even when dealing with a well-qualified individual with plenty of experience, the possibility exists that, they will take the money and run. You should not let this keep you from hiring others, though. By hiring, other people to help do the little things will help you grow the business faster.

Here at Melbourne SEO Services, we’ve taken outsourcing to a whole new level. Like us on Facebook to learn more about our systems for outsourcing.

Not too sure where to get started?

Click here to claim your free Business Accelerator sessions and discover if SEO is right for you.

8 Comments

Reid Wells
on March 24, 2011 at 5:10 am

I have been thinking a lot about outsourcing and I keep coming across blog posts about it. I think I’m going to start doing some.

My wife does this pretty often to get little things done that she does not have time for, I really thought it was a waste of money until I saw how much it helped her make money. Well worth the investment if you find the right people!

That’s right Joe. Getting star players really helps a lot if you are outsourcing these critical tasks involving your business. Getting to trust them is one thing and of course, paying them on time is another. Both are important aspects of doing outsourcing.

I believe you can’t do it all, especially if you are taking care of your online business. Have to share the plate with someone so you can free your hands and have more time to think about some other important things about your business.

When you want to expand your online business I believe it is inevitable for you to start outsourcing. You just can’t do everything on your own. So unless you want your business to stay where it is right now or you want to continue feeling stressed out, start looking into getting the staff to help you out.

Hiring your staff to outsource tasks can teach you a lot of lessons on how to manage your business. It is not that easy to trust someone that you haven’t seen personally to do all these things and yet you are giving the person access to your business.

So just be very careful on hiring your staff. Well, some unexpected events happen here and there. But what is important is that you are doing outsourcing because you really wanted your business to advance, and that is what is really important after all. 🙂

“Once trained this is their task now, which will improve time management and work quality.”

I like this one. This is something that you need to remember especially if you are hiring someone to do the task for you. There’s a period of adjustment which is understandable. I really like it when clients trust their outsourced staff that they can (and will) deliver the work well.

I believe that trusting your VAs in this situation makes them motivated to learn as fast as they can to finally contribute quality work to their clients.

I echo the same thoughts Nicole. For the companies that are outsourcing though, I think the real key is for them to find people they can trust in the first place. Undeniably, there are some people you can’t trust and there’s a need to establish first if a VA does indeed have the right character to deserve the trust.

Great Post!
Outsourcing, especially on online business got lots of benefits but we can’t deny the fact that it also has its disadvantages. There are many things that are at risk, like quality and security. But I could share you one tip from the blog I’ve recently bumped into.

To monitor and communicate with the firm or the person you’ve hired, you should create a virtual workspace. Virtual workspace software like Mantis, Drop down and TimeDoctor for time tracking, it will allow you to communicate efficiently and provide accountability.

Spending a little money to save a lot makes perfect sense, so I suggest you outsource wisely for it to be successful!